Leveraging Open Data for Community Benefit: Process for Data Sources and Questions

Abstract

As part of the “Leveraging Open Data for Community Benefit” project, an exploration of open data was undertaken to identify and examine open data sets that could be used in helping public library staff learn about their communities and assist them in planning programs and services. We developed a set of criteria that we used to guide our evaluation and selection of potential open data sets. The criteria included the following: ● High degree of coverage, preferably national ● Data available at a usable level (e.g. local, census tract or block) ● Data published or updated in past 2 years - preferably updated on annual basis ● Accessible by API or download ● Data completeness ● Data cleanliness ● License / Use